From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1) in r/FantasyRomance Goodreads Group

Jul 27, 2023 Taylor - TheTayloredPage rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 06, 2020 Kathryn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-romance, vampires, shapeshifter, fucking-terrible, heroine-too-young

Well, I did like this, but GEEBUS was it long. By the end I kept skimming, skimming, skimming. I love me some internal monologue but this book is evidence that it can be overdone. --I'm not sure that here it's a "not-you-it's-me", because do you know how OVER I am of young heroines? That is the reason I've started categorizing books as "praise be they are grownups."

This heroine is better than the other I've read of Armentrout's - goodness gracious was her heroine in Wicked an idiot - though Pop Well, I did like this, but GEEBUS was it long. By the end I kept skimming, skimming, skimming. I love me some internal monologue but this book is evidence that it can be overdone. --I'm not sure that here it's a "not-you-it's-me", because do you know how OVER I am of young heroines? That is the reason I've started categorizing books as "praise be they are grownups."

This heroine is better than the other I've read of Armentrout's - goodness gracious was her heroine in Wicked an idiot - though Poppy here was also written as "so unique, so beautiful, so smart". My AP kids just read a commencement speech - "You Are Not Special" - and I think the message there is one I want to get behind. Anyway, I did enjoy her narrative voice and she is written to be a believable badass, unlike in Wicked. Likewise, Hawke was a good character - his preservation of her independence and protection and endorsement of her emotional states were feminist and hit all the right notes. However, (view spoiler)

Okay, now on to world-building. The first thing that bugged me were the names. Penallaphe (Greek), Vikter (Latin/Roman), TAWNY (French), Hawke (Old English), a ton of others - there is no coherence between the names, and the spellings were funky just - in my obviously too-negative mind - to make this world "not our own." Secondly, (god I am using the transition phrases I tell my kids NEVER to use) I had to open up X-Ray on Kindle to try and figure out what the fuck an Ascended is - I get that we couldn't know because Poppy couldn't know, but JESUS please don't make me wait for 500 something pages to explain something that everyone in the culture seems to have some understanding of but never actually tell your reader what the fuck they are. And then when it is revealed it is so info-dumpy. Page after page after page of Hawke's explanation of it. GRRR

Okay, the same thing is happening that happened with the aforementioned Wicked - I think I mostly was okay with a book and then go OFF in the review. I'm about to start the second and have learned I've got to write my reviews in a timely fashion or I forget everything. So yeah. I was frustrated, and it took me too long to read this, and I'm hoping it pulls a Sarah J. Maas-style the second book is fucking amazing. ...more

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Feb 24, 2023 Beth M. rated it did not like it

Main character: boring and annoying
Love interest: just plain annoying
Character growth: haha no
World building: vague to non-existent
Plot: was there a plot?
Writing: just ok

The vagueness all around in this book was seriously irritating to me. How am I supposed to be immersed in another world if you never really say anything about the world? And then to pop out an "oh by the way, these people are [censored]" at the very end without warning? ...more

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Jul 08, 2022 Chelsea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I almost abandoned this book at 17% - it was SO BAD up until then and felt like everything was a set up building towards a bad knock-off of Anne Rice’s Beauty smut-trilogy. And then suddenly it found a plot! And then I read the whole rest of the book on one sitting and stayed up way too late.

No spoilers but stick with it until 20-ish percent before you DNF it.

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Jul 14, 2022 Benji rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book features: lack of consent issues, the least subtle foreshadowing I’ve ever read, a 200 year old man with the maturity of a 9 year old, 3 different kinds of vampires with an extremely convoluted explanation of how they differ, and an astoundingly naive and oblivious Not Like Other Girls MC. The writing is tortured and the plot is hot garbage, objectively it is very, very bad. I’ll be honest though, part of me enjoyed this, it’s too bad to take seriously so it became mindlessly fun trash ...more

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Mar 28, 2024 Claire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-fantasyromance-morally-grey-ed, reread, best-in-series, best-of-2024

Recommended through my SJM obsession on bookstagram, finally gave it a go and I got sucked in sooo quickly. By the second half I was reading it any second I got.

The only slight irritation was Poppy’s ability to forget something she’s been told five minutes ago and have a meltdown which could’ve been avoided if she’d remembered that conversation, but it’s only book 1. She’ll grow.

She’s already a badass, and do not even get me started on HIM. I’m a lifelong Damon girlie, I am ALL IN to see where ...more

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